Book Launch, a Rather Large Croissant at Lotus, and How my Clients Ended up in Bed.

Networking at Lotus

I’ve been blogging a lot about my book launch lately, which makes it sound as if that’s all I do.

But in our main businesses, thebestof Norwich and Bright Yellow Marketing, we’ve held some fascinating events lately.

Last month the head of marketing for Lotus gave a talk to our thebestof Norwich members, followed by a tour of the factory. After the excitement of one of our delegates driving straight through security without stopping, and finding herself blocked in by a security contingent, we all chatted in the Lotus Originals Store before hearing the talk.

We are very relaxed about our events, but didn’t know what to expect when Lotus joined thebestof Norwich as a client and offered to host an event. Luckily the in-store scalextric track got everyone feeling at ease, and the Lotus team were very welcoming.

The store is amazing – quality Lotus gifts and clothing, including the “Originals” collection, the classic “Heritage” range, the Lotus F1 Collection and a performance range “reflecting the engineering soul” of Lotus.

Lotus kindly sponsored the event, supplying croissants, coffee and tea, and a free tour.

As we left for the tour of the factory, my stomach was rumbling.  I purposely hadn’t eaten anything whilst we were networking, so I grabbed what I thought was a small chocolate twist. It wasn’t small. It was massive! Part of it had been hidden under a napkin.

It was too late to put it back down, but I realised that I couldn’t take it into the factory with me, so ended up trying to discreetly eat a gigantic long chocolate croissant on the short walk from the store to the factory! OK perhaps it wasn’t so discreet.

The factory tour itself was fascinating. I was not expecting to see so much of the work done by hand. It was very organised.

Everyone came out wanting a Lotus, even those who had entered the factory swearing they would never want to own one.

That week we also ran social media training for some of the other thebestof franchisees in the fantastic training suite in Solihull. The training went down so well that they booked us in to run more training – a huge compliment.

Since then, we have also started running fortnightly social media mentoring workshops. I was a bit worried as one or two of the delegates already use social media a lot, but they gave us brilliant feedback.

Last week I ran a ladies event called Coffee at Caistor, chatted to a client over scrambled egg on toast at our regular morning meeting, and on Friday we ran a client-only networking event where our clients ended up in bed!

This Friday I will be on a luxury cruise of the broads – all in the name of business, of course.

In between all of this we have had various meetings, updated the website, promoted our clients through social media and blogs, created a printed newsletter, organised a marquee at the Royal Norfolk Show, met up with clients…and published a book.

The only thing I haven’t done? Actively looked for new clients! Our new website changes are kicking in, though, and this week we have had a flurry of new enquiries  via the website – actually, today it was more of an avalanche.  Everything we do is geared to encourage people to contact us, or recommend people to us,  rather than us cold-calling businesses.  It makes business much easier, and frees us up to focus on our clients.

The website changes make it easier to promote our clients on social media as well, so all in all, it’s a good month.

Although our two businesses are based very much online – one has a website at the hub, and the other is based on social media, you can see that my life revolves around people, and the relationships that we create with people.

And in case you are thinking to yourself  “How did their clients end up lying in bed?”

Well click here to find out.

Author: Sara Greenfield